Slow Graphics Performance MacOS High Sierra

High Sierra Graphics Performance Issue (Nvidia GPU)

After months of suffering, I found a remedy: Nvidia Web Drivers. Basically an Nvidia maintained version of video card drivers.

For some reason, video card drivers on macOS is in Apple's hand. Apple does not release stand alone video card drivers, they include this in macOS releases. However, Nvidia does have its own version of drivers, and they are called Nvidia Web Drivers. It has nothing to do with Web. It's just a differentiator from the Apple-provided driver.

Nvidia does not list these drivers on its website. But if you search for 'nvidia web driver mac' + macOS version (aka. 10.13.3) in Google, you will find a bunch of download links listed in various blogs, posts, etc, which really are links from Nvidia's website.

After installed this driver, my performance issues were completely gone. Everything runs perfectly just like it did in Yosemite era. It even resolved the freeze issue when sometimes my MacBook Pro awakes from sleep when my 4k external monitor is connected.

If you have a Nvidia GPU model this is definitely worth trying. Hope this helps. Thanks.

If you got external monitor plugged external graphic card (NVIDIA) is active, without external monitor internal graphic (Intel) is active (mostly)

try Releases · steveschow/gfxCardStatus · GitHub

intel graphic is without performance issues, nvidia not

Hi Luis,

I'm sorry but I can confirm it is NOT a hardware issue, certainly in my case.

Using High Sierra, I found many websites using WebGL very slow, most application using OpenGL very slow, Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign all to be impossible to use, although not all of the time, just most of the time. using iStatMenus I was able to see the frame rate of whichever GPU my laptop was using, when things were slow it would drop to one or two frames per second. Unusable.

Over Christmas I backed up, reformatted and reinstalled my laptop with Sierra. Installed the same software I have been using, everything was faster, iStatMenus showed frame rates of 40-60 frames per second. This was using the same hardware. The problem was caused by High Sierra.

One site I found to be terrible, under High Sierra, was windy.com, for predicting wind/weather and routes for sailing, this would drop the frame rate down to 2 frames per second, in Sierra, it averages 45 frames per second, animations are smooth, compared to having to wait for the pointer to move so I can wait for it to respond to a click. I also use a similar app from the Mac App Store 'predict wind' which gave similar problems, but under Sierra, it performs great, same with Adobe apps too.

I have an early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro 15" with 16gb ram and an SSD, it has an intel HD4000 onboard gpu and Nvidia GT650m with 1gb ram, the machine spec is certainly within the parameters for running High Sierra, and the graphics cards although both are slower than those in current gen laptops, are more than capable of the spec required by apple for utilising the Metal2 architecture.

I have had this issue too since High Sierra 10.13, and it didn’t get better with updates (still present on 10.13.3). I have a Early 2013 MacBook Pro (Intel HD 4000 + nVidia GT 650m).

I did some testing, using iStat Menus to check which GPU is active and how much GPU memory is used.

So, in my experience:

1. When the integrated GPU is active, everything is fine.

Scrolling and every other macOS transition (changing space, opening mission control, etc…) are smooth as they should be and smoother than they was on Sierra.

iStat Menus show a GPU memory usage of around 25-40%.

2. If the discrete nVidia 650m GPU is active (because Photoshop and/or some other software that trigger discrete GPU activation are open) and Safari or another browser are open, the GPU memory usage is between 115% and 175%! and every transition is sluggish, and macOS is almost unusable. Multitasking between apps is very slow and you have to wait a second or two at every front app focus switch. Scrolling down in a webpage in browsers is awfully jerky.

3. If the discrete nVidia 650m GPU is active, but Safari is closed or I disable hardware acceleration in Chrome or Firefox, the graphic memory usage is still high, between 75% and 105%, but the general feel is waaay better, much less sluggish.

I don’t have game benchmark from when I had Sierra installed, but full screen games are still playable, maybe there is a performance hit but is much less noticeable than the macOS transitions and browsers scrolling.

I tried to install nVidia Driver but I didn’t see big improvements, same very high GPU memory usage. But I had a lot of graphic glitches so I reverted to original Apple driver.

I also tried a clean install of 10.13.3 on a separate partition, no luck, the bug behaves exactly the same.

So I suggest to use Chrome or Firefox with hardware acceleration disabled when the discrete GPU is active, until the bug is fixed (if it will ever be).

Do someone know if hardware acceleration can be disabled in Safari?

Can someone with a AMD GPU and iStat Menus installed do the same tests I did, just to know if the bug is present for them also?

I finally rolled back to Sierra 10.12.6. Everything is really smooth again and I don’t have to deal with nasty bugs

The biggest new features of High Sierra (for my use) are in Safari, and you can install Safari 11 on Sierra too.

This is the first time ever that I had to rollback to a previous macOS version, and I use OS X since Tiger. Also Lion was slower than Snow Leopard, but it has nice new features and most bugs and slow down were solved with 10.7.2. I never felt the need to rollback.

High Sierra was advertised as a performance improvements and bug fix release, but…

APFS caused:

• Much slower boot time.

• Long delay in moving a file on desktop, dragging an attachment out of mail, saving a screenshot, if a finder extension in system preferences is active (like Dropbox or Google Backup and Sync)

Windowserver on Metal 2 caused:

• The bug we’re discussing in this thread, the OS is unusable on MacBook Pros with an nVidia GPU, when the discrete GPU is activated. The only way to get around this is to open no more than one App (between those that trigger the Discrete GPU, plus the browsers) at the same time. You can imagine the impact on workflow.

• Other bugs with external monitors (I couldn’t test this)

I had some other small bugs with fonts that were not present in Sierra, that were slowing my workflow too.

NONE of those bugs is solved in 10.13.3 or in 10.13.4 beta, and this is a first in my experience, 10.XX.2 versions were usually much more stable. I sent feedback for every bug I found since 10.13 is out, but I saw no improvements.

Not to mention the critical security bug that Apple had to face since the launch of High Sierra, luckily those were fixed in a matter of days.

Since I had to format the SSD, I obviously tried a clean install of 10.13.3 before rolling back to 10.12.6, but every bug was still there, as stated by everyone on this and other threads.

All of this (isolating the issue, testing and especially rollback) was a HUGE waste of time, and I sincerely hope that Apple will go back to a 2 years (or more, why not) release cycle. The quality control and beta testing is simply awful nowadays.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 on MacBook Pro Retina Early 2013, nVidia GeForce GT 650M (now on 10.12.6)

I also have this exact problem on my 2012 retina macbook pro. I don't even do anything graphically-intensive but it's still unbearably laggy when the discrete GPU is in use. The only solution I've found for the time being is to use the gfxCardStatus app to force the use of the integrated GPU which doesn't suffer from any kind of performance problems. It's ridiculous that a less powerful GPU is less laggy than the more powerful one and it clearly looks to me like a driver issue which Apple has to fix ASAP but apparently couldn't care less about.

Again, it's High Sierra's Metal2 and the Windowserver process that is creating the problem. The only solution is to run at your monitor's Default resolution, set in Displays Preferences. On my system, I can also run at the far right "More Space" option and I have no lag or slowdown.

Any other resolution choice other than Default or "More Space" on my 4k monitor lags out.

I'm not sure why this is happening, but my guess is that Metal2 doesn't handle the scaling properly, making it require far too many GPU or CPU resources, which lags the Windowserver process and thus creates the screen lag/graphic performance problems. The older your laptop, the more aware of the lag you'll be. This happens on brand new Macbook Pro Touchbars as well - you just have to look very carefully for it, because the faster CPU and GPU compensate for it much quicker so you don't notice is as much as with an older machine.

It's an Apple bug to fix. The only thing you can do is wait it out, upgrade to a faster Mac, run at your external monitor's native resolution, or revert back to Sierra which requires a copy of the Sierra installer, and a complete computer format and reinstall.

On my mid 2014 MBP with external display running on 3200x1800 the performance was terrible, especially when Android Studio was running.

I installed the latest web driver for 10.13.6, linked on this site: https://www.tonymacx86.com/nvidia-drivers/

And now it seems that fixed the problem or at least really improved it.

Happy New Year everyone,

Well, over Christmas I decided to reinstall my MacBook Pro, I have a Sierra install USB, so I backed up, wiped, reinstalled and waited.

All problems are gone. running Sierra that is, GPU both discreet and onboard are back to full speed, it's amazing how much slower everything was under High Sierra.

I am sure that illustrates the fact it is not a hardware`re issue but a software issue where High Sierra is not actually fully compatible/optimised for the hardware it is meant to be compatible with.

I'll be sticking with Sierra until the issue is sorted out.

Early 2013 rMBP, 15", intel HD4000 and Nvidia GT650m GPU, quad core i7, 16gb ram and 256gb ssd.

Don’t worry Boris, it’s not your hardware, I am seeing that issue on a brand new MBK 15” 2017 - as well as a couple of older MBPs.

In a rush of madness I upgraded all my machines (what was I thinking?), I use a couple, family has the others ...

Graphics was slow on all of them - they didn’t all suddenly have hardware issues.

I reverted back to Sierra on a couple, now graphics is nice and fast.

I still have one on High Sierra hoping I can push forward with that one - but Apple have not acknowledged the issue, we don’t even know if they admit to its existence, in the past they have denying what is obvious to everyone else.

I obviously really like Apple gear but I wish bug reports were more open - I lodged one they ask for data, information, questions, but there is no feedback like “ok we can replicate the issue”, or “it’ll be fixed in the next version” ... I am just left in the dark which is a big bummer. That is a bigger bummer than the issue!

Anyway don’t worry you are not the only one, plenty of us have it.

Hi iLCerbero,

I can't do exactly those tests right now but I have done many similar ones already.

I have 4 MacBook Pro machines of various ages - they all suffer under High Sierra. It's just that the 2017 model machine hides the pain better.

From what I can tell Safari does not have a simple hardware acceleration on/off switch, it's automatic - on the newest machine it just choses Integrated graphics, it does not force the Radeon 555 to be engaged. But if I'm running a game which does engage the Radeon then the FPS is impacted if there are too many other apps open, closing Safari speeds the game up.

In all of this I have learned you can upgrade Mac's one version too far.

I have learned, the hard way, you must keep a good backup before "upgrading" the OS.

The 2012 MBP 13" non-Retina was a brilliant little machine before High Sierra - then it became too clunky and jerky - unusable. I put Sierra back - nice machine again.

The 2010 MBP 17"/Nvidia struggles with Sierra let alone High Sierra, that's definitely one OS too far for it.

The 2015 MBP 13" Retina works with High Sierra but the graphics is about 20-25% slower than Sierra as measured by FPS on various games.

Sierra was nice, High Sierra not so much.

Cheers.

MBP 15" 2017 - Radeon 555. os:10.13.1

MBP 13" 2015 - Integrated os:10.13.1

MBP 13" 2012 -Non-Retina - Integrated os:10.12

MBP 17" 2010 - Nvidia ... os:10.12

I formated my SSD and reinstalled El Capitan from a flash drive (the last download I had oin my App purchase).

Everythung is back to normal, but I am curious if anyone has heard anything from Apple people.

Over Christmas I wiped High Sierra from the SSD in my Early 2013 rMBP 15", and reinstalled Sierra, everything went back to normal, all performance was nice and fast again, I have not yet noticed any increase in temperature.

In fact while I was running High Sierra I switched on the sensors menu in iStat Menus because I though my laptop was running hotter, under Sierra it all seems fine. It gets hot if I use Handbrake for any length of time but I'm not surprised by that, under normal load, few tabs open in safari, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop open, it seems to be normal temperature.

Can I ask why you went back to El Capitan instead of just Sierra? Perhaps if there was a firmware change when installing High Sierra (I don't know if there was) that might cause a problem with El Capitan but not with he more recent Sierra.

El Capitan was my last download available in my app store, so I could create a USB bootable system and erase my HD and re-install.

I hadn't updated to Sierra yet, and stupitedly enough didn't have a time machine back up, so I had to back up everything manually and re-install all the programs thereafter. Video performance is all back to normal, which proves again (as in case we everyboy else in this forum) that this is a software issue and not hardware.

I may be imagining that my MBP is getting hotter than before 🙂